Spring Décor Tips

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Front Porch

Front Foyer

Living Room

Easter is an eggcellent time to hop into spring décor. That was cheesy, I know, but that’s half the fun and what’s life if you can’t ‘yoke’ around? Easter is synonymous with spring makeovers - a time to lighten up and cool off your rooms after a winter of warm, inspiring decorating ideas and darker colours.

Take down heavy drapery

Remove faux-fur toss cushions from the sofa

Change heavy bedding and warm duvets on the bed with crisp cotton linens.

Replace cinnamon and apple scented potpourri’s with spring scents such as lilac and lavender.

Lighten up your home with fresh spring decorating ideas and colour palettes.

Start with the Easter Holiday itself. Subtle touches of the season are best, as this is the difference between tastefully seasonal and tacky.

Front Porch:

On the front porch, place a black concrete bunny next to a planter. Add a few coloured eggs among the potted shrub or plants within the planter.

For most of us, it is still too early to plant flowers, so add green with planted cedars and mini shrubbery in containers near the front door.

Front Foyer:

Once inside the front door, greet visitors with a sisal area carpet and a vase filled with fresh cut tulips or daffodils. When choosing a vase for your fresh flowers this spring, think light and clear: glass, crystal, sterling silver or white china are excellent spring textures.

Living Room:

In the living room, vases of pussy willows or other flowering stems are timely on the fireplace mantel. A container of potted Easter lilies is also a wonderful touch.

If your room is decorated in a country style, add wooden or ceramic bunnies amongst your other accessories. Contemporary-styled rooms should use whimsical and stylized rabbits.

Put a hand-painted iron screen, such as one from www.jjiinternational.com, in front of the fireplace.

On the back of the sofa lay a light, cotton throw blanket in a fresh spring shade of blue, white, teal or moss green. Seasonal toss cushions, sewn from bunny inspired tapestry fabrics, silk plaids in bright, tangy spring shades of pink, yellow and coral or any fabric designed with spring motifs: floral, bold checks stripes, plaid or botanicals. You may even go so far as to slipcover your furniture with spring textures such as linen, cotton, and denim.

Table-top photo frames can be changed to hold antique Easter cards, last year’s family Easter photos or bunny art cards. A stack of gardening books and a dish of chocolate eggs are also an eggceptional idea for the coffee table top.

Dining Room

Kitchen

Bathroom

Bedroom

Dining Room:

Add spring touches to the dining room with a large bowl of designer eggs. Use quail, chicken and goose eggs to design eggs that work with the room's colour palette and style.

For a traditional room use craft-glue and gold or silver glitter to fully cover eggs.

For an Asian inspired room, spray eggs with a gloss black paint. Be creative and think ‘outside the shell!"

Kitchen:

Bloom into style with window boxes or containers of fresh herbs and flowers grown on the windowsill above the kitchen sink. Keep the container appropriate to the room’s style of décor.

A wicker picnic basket used as a display on a sideboard or counter top is inspiring and spring themed. Fill it with a loaf of French bread, bottle of wine and some faux green grapes. You might even find the time for a real picnic or two this spring.

Bathroom:

In the bathroom, add a new floral shower curtain, matching bath mat and some brightly coloured towels.

Arrange soaps and extra towels in a wicker basket that sits on the floor near the tub or on the back of the toilet.

Use a floral or basket weave canister set from a kitchen store to store cotton balls and Q-tips on the counter top.

Tie up a stack of extra towels with a gingham check ribbon toped with a silk flower and store on an open shelf.

Clean up on spring décor by using and displaying handmade soaps that will bring a nose full of floral scents into this room. Purchase floral scented soaps that are egg shaped. They will also fit into an egg cup holder which can be used as a soap dish.

The bathroom is also a great place for a vase of fresh spring flowers.

Bedroom:

There will be no rest this spring for the dedicated decorator until the sheets are changed to fresh, crisp linens.

Finishing touches on a spring bed may include lots of forbidden pillows (the ones you don’t sleep on) in greens, marigold, magenta and white and patterns such as bold checks and floral.

Beside the bed, set a vase overfilled with my favorite spring flower: lilac and a large stack of spring decorating magazines.

In the world of high-end stemware design in Saint John, rugged and low has been winning out over thin and spindly. Wine glasses without stems have been making a slow but steady inroads into the status quo of the beverage world. Cylindrical snifter-like glasses with minimal bases (if any at all) are fast becoming popular among younger wine drinkers. What starts with the young may spread to the old.